Even as
Farah Khan is toying with the idea of directing the
Rajesh Khanna biopic, producer-actor
Nikhil Dwivedi, who is bankrolling the film, believes she’s a perfect fit for the director’s chair in this project. Talking about it, Nikhil told BT in a recent chat, “We’ve approached Farah to direct the film and she is toying with the idea. She’s going through Gautam Chintamani’s book, Dark Star: The
Loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna. She is working on turning it into a feature and Gautam is writing the screenplay. We also have certain actors in mind but the final decision will rest with Farah once she’s completely on board. Honestly, I think Farah is one of the most competent directors we have. She’s mature, she has seen the complexities and the struggles of this industry very closely. She just tucks that serious side of her away, brushes it beneath all the jokes and laughter. But I firmly think she’s just perfect to handle this film. She’s an apt choice to direct the film.”
Talking about struggles, rises and falls, Nikhil believes there’s a side to Rajesh Khanna’s story that the film aims to bring to light. He says, “Rajesh Khanna’s is a story of rise that no one has seen and a fall that was as meteoric and unexplained. He came back with a string of golden jubilees. You could have issues with him and could point flaws in him but you could never take away the impact he had on people. Even when his movies didn’t perform, he was among the top five stars of the country. He had a complex personality, not understood by many. The ones who really did understand him, swore by him. RD Burman had undergone surgery in the UK and he was kind of alone and going through a low phase at work. Rajesh Khanna took a flight overnight to get there. There was no professional string tying them; he was just there for him. There was an inherent goodness in the man, which, like many other aspects of his personality, remained largely unwritten.”
